‘ It won’t only kill you, it will hurt the whole time you’re dying ‘

Monia Ben Hamouda & Michele Gabriele

Milan based artists Michele Gabriele and Monia Ben Hamouda shared a show at OJ space in Istanbul to close the season. No explanations needed but a poem that one can find while entering the show to discover all in situ works. The exhibition gives a twist to the academic white cube as OJ space describes itself as a multi-disciplinary artist community and a physical studio. Watch out for next season shows, you may heard about it.

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Monia Ben Hamouda, born in Milan in 1991, lives and works between Milan, Helsinki and Tunisi. Her selected exhibitions include; “H O P E”, curated by New Scenario , Dresden DE; “Miranda”, solo show, curated by PANE project, Milan IT and “You would like that we were not here. But we are too emotionally absorbed by the homesickness of places that we’ll see only from the windows of our Bentleys”, curated by Michele Gabriele, Milan IT.

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When things die we realize what they once were, One ring of smoke pulsating in space One moon hanging in the air of a stuffy night on the cusp of nothing Apex vitality Trash collectors screamlaugh like demons behind the rusting black gate over the rumble of their V8s over their hand-soldered Cumbia FM radio, riding the tendrilled cloud of curdled milk and mildew beer and rainsoaked oil spattered cardboard, rotting in the sunlight This arid mudpatch once birthed amphibianism Now we trample orchids dilated flinching under explosions curled fetal digging shallow holes, hands clinched, pants-pissing screaming power-hungry control-mad sunburning on the dented roof of an old desert Audi Our moment might soon be over I want to lose myself forever in a sublime haze of loud distracting life-affirming anything A shaky pistol emerging from a shadow Dogs disappear out windows Forceful sliding glass doors guillotining tails off of common lizards Boiled grey meat, recreational banging, awaiting final bipedal opi Draw an x over the vein on your temple with a black marker Immolate entertainment A deep scar scraped into the lateral line of your Led Zeppelin red convertible, Mardi Gras beads asunder, the taste of collegiate decadence propelling our tongues A bag of orange rocks shattered into crude clay sludge Lost without our stupid thin and self-reflective technology in the suffocating bearhug of nature’s icy indifference, crying, frozen, desperate phonecalls to Mom go to voicemail No theatre, no lights, a thing was and is now not, against rationality, comprehensive, inert Also there is no way to know things until we learn them Things like the slow lunging beauty of nighttime, glistening, revealing itself thin and rich and layered like the veiny tonality of bat wings The lèse-majesté of the horizon, the sunset Every pore is a temple! What are we even scared of? Clumped in a flesh heap in the bottom of a mud covered shower expelling ions An edge of foam between wet and dry sand where the base of all life forms. A frothy smelly mustard perfect line, where the means and ends of our bones and hopes are picked apart by crustaceans What are we waiting for?